Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Friday, May 12, 2017

Arts Journal - Words

Humans, animals, human-animal hybrids, disembodied limbs and other parts, monkeys playing bagpipes, rabbits in a funeral procession, naked bishops – the surprises are nearly endless. What’s more, says a scholar from the University of Glasgow, these drawings, doodles, and offhand notes can tell us a surprising amount about the people who wrote and read these volumes.

Bhilar, a strawberry-farming mountain town of some 5,000 people about 150 miles southeast of Mumbai, has a particularly rich collection of rare books in the Marathi language (as well as works in Hindi and English), and the plan of the Maharashtra state government is to promote literary tourism and host book festivals in Bhilar along the lines of those in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye.